July 14, 2010

There's a thin line. An invisible line.
It's a line in your head.
It's a line in my head too. And on my side is me, and the things I've always known.
There are people here, and over there too.
I mostly try to keep my mouth shut about it.
The stiller the tongue...Lots of times I'm thinking about the other side of where I am.
I spend time on both sides of the line.
It's useless trying to explain the line to people I know.
Because it's an invisible line. I don't think many people will ever know it's there.
All in all, I don't understand the line and would rather just assume it's not there.
But I think I need to care about the line.
Brass tacks: the line pisses me off.

Yes, this is going to be one of those "my life is awesome" posts. But it's worth making a log of. I like keeping memories and keepsakes of good days. It's a way of jogging memories and such, especially when I feel like shit.

So yesterday my girlfriend (call her A for the moment) came up to visit for a few days. Pretty cool. I invited her mainly for the Wednesday, but she came along to a syslink party on Tuesday night as well. My floormate (call him P) and I dragged A along - she is a gamer chick - and it turned out to be the best night she'd had in ages. We booked a room at a neighbouring residential college, brought along Xbox 360, Wii, PC and NDS consoles, and just had some fun. Unfortunately, we never got around to Nazi Zombies, but we did get around to kicking each others' cans at Halo 3, plus getting in some Guitar Hero and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. (The NDSs were left largely untouched; the PCs were unused except mine, which was a SNES emulator for the night.) We had plenty of noms - chips, lollies, softies and a cake - well, two massive cookies on top of one another with icing in the shape of Sonic The Hedgehog and a "Happy Birfday Mike" (sic) written on it. We agreed that it must be done again. The people that went were mostly my floormate's friends and his former floormate's friends, and there was a consensus that they were all weird as hell. Including me. But I can take that.

So this morning P, A and I took off to the city, inviting three former floormates along (call them N, Z and K). N's brother also joined halfway through. After a quick lunch at a slightly-too-expensive food court, we went to enjoy the entertainment complex: an arcade, ten-pin bowling and laser tag. P and I were always going to go up against each other (as this particular lasertag is a team game). I cleaned him up in the ten-pin bowling - I blame my success on a recent spate of Wii bowling - and narrowly beat him at laser tag1. Regardless, good fun was had by all... but there was still more to come.

The next plan of attack was coffee. When "coffee" was suggested, they just meant "coffee" - but I had my eyes on a Tim Tam cheesecake that was on display in the cake cabinet. I was given a $9-sized slice (along with my iced choc), and I consider it my greatest food-related achievement in some time. Jokes flew around the room about my effort. I still contend that there should be a law against cake that delicious. Next was time to head home, so N's brother took a tram and the rest of us jumped on the train.

We grabbed copies of mX - a free, daily, local rag that caters for the hoi polloi - especially commuters - and is very amusing to people who aren't into goss, glam and glitz. I read out the horoscopes, the "Overheard" (stupid quotes), sections about love and relationship advice, then the "Vent Your Spleen" (letters that are essentially rants about current affairs). One was about the state of public transport, in particular complaints about "eating apples, doing their makeup and taking on phones" in trains. There was much debate amongst the six of us about that last one. We made reference to the state of Japanese public transport, and how women being groped were on the increase. Z made comments about how bad the state of this was, and my reply was "Groping's fine, but..." I realised what I said as the other five - as well as some sharp-eared commuters - looked across at me and started laughing their heads off. I had intended to say "Groping's one thing, but..." and then compare it to phone use. It was the biggest laugh I'd had in ages, especially when it was pointed out that I could end up in the Overheard section within the next few days.

To cap it off, when P, A and I got back, over tea we played Truth Or Dare on P's new HTC. Of course we made things dirty. Of course we made stupid quotes. And of course these quotes were recorded for posterity, as was a video of me making a "yo momma" joke after being dared to do so.

I will sleep well tonight.

1It was his first shot at laser tag. I was very impressed. I was being annoyed by N's brother as he constantly shot me, but otherwise I was nailing all my shots. Especially the long-range snipes. The blue team lost due to the weight of numbers (5-4) but it was the individual scores that mattered most. We are currently saving up enough money to go again and again and again, for both of us to get in more practise.